• Assyrian Christians crowdfund an army to reclaim homeland from DAESH
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[quote]At a covert training camp just north of Mosul, ten miles from the front lines with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the first wave of Assyrian Christian volunteers for the Nineveh Protection Unit (NPU) have just completed boot camp. Funded in part by an Assyrian-American telethon campaign and trained by a handful of freelance U.S. military veterans, around 500 men are set to deploy next week as part of an unorthodox — and unproven — project. But as ISIL pillages what’s left of their ancestral homeland, and Iraqi government forces prove incapable of stopping them, some among the region's dwindling Assyrian Christian minority have placed their hopes for self-preservation in the NPU, which plans to grow by the thousands in the coming months. “Their morale and capabilities are higher than almost anything I’ve seen,” said Matthew VanDyke, an American filmmaker and former rebel fighter in Libya who organized training sessions over the past two months to whip the NPU into fighting shape. “The kidnapping of their people, the loss of their homeland, the use of their women as sex slaves — it’s really put a fire in them.” The idea for a professionalized Assyrian army was first conceived last summer, when ISIL mounted its infamous surge across northwestern Iraq’s Nineveh plains, slaughtering or enslaving hundreds of Assyrians and other religious minorities who stood in its path. Their supposed protectors, the U.S.-backed Iraqi army, wilted before the onslaught, with many soldiers reportedly abandoning their posts and stripping off their uniforms to avoid detection. The lesson, said Kaldo Oghana, an Iraqi Assyrian official and NPU spokesman, was that “no one protected minorities then, and no one ever will.” So in early December, political leaders for the 400,000-member Assyrian community in Iraq, working alongside an Assyrian-American political action group, the American Mesopotamian Organization (AMO), vetted and enlisted the first tranche of displaced volunteers from among 2,500 applicants to compose the NPU’s inaugural battalion. As part of the AMO's Restore Nineveh Now campaign, the goal is to build a force from the ground up that will earn the respect of the Iraqi government and perhaps the anti-ISIL coalition led by Washington. Ultimately, the NPU says, they hope to prove themselves worthy of Iraqi or Western arms. Though it has not seen action yet, the NPU has already attracted considerable attention in the West, in part due to VanDyke’s involvement. Through a project he calls Sons of Liberty International, VanDyke has crowdfunded online and tapped $12,000 of his savings to train local Christian forces against ISIL — starting with the NPU. At the NPU camp last month, VanDyke recruited five U.S. combat veterans to run a training course — involving simulated battles and physical training — at an Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga facility. "The world has been slow to act," against ISIL, said VanDyke, who spoke from the Kurdish city of Erbil. "We don't have to seek approval from Congress. We just step in and help." The urgency of their mission was underlined in tragic fashion this week, when ISIL stormed over 30 Assyrian villages along the Khabour River in Syria. In a pattern that has become all too familiar, ISIL quickly overpowered a smattering of local Assyrian and other militia fighters, burning homes to the ground, abducting up to 300 men, women and children, and scattering thousands more from their now mostly overrun homeland. “We refuse to be just another militia,” said Oghana. “We are working to build security and defense systems for our homeland, the Nineveh plains.” [img]http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/articles/2015/2/26/on-the-brink-of-extinction-assyrian-christians-crowd-fund-an-army/jcr:content/mainpar/adaptiveimage/src.adapt.960.high.1425026607388.jpg[/img][/quote] [url]http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/26/on-the-brink-of-extinction-assyrian-christians-crowd-fund-an-army.html[/url]
Godspeed.
Deus vult!
Why is it DAESH instead of ISIS in every headline now is it because of that "dont call us DAESH or we'll personally shit in your chimney" ?
That title makes me picture someone starting a kickstarter for an army
[QUOTE=damnatus;47236971]Why is it DAESH instead of ISIS in every headline now is it because of that "dont call us DAESH or we'll personally shit in your chimney" ?[/QUOTE] yes
[QUOTE=damnatus;47236971]Why is it DAESH instead of ISIS in every headline now is it because of that "dont call us DAESH or we'll personally shit in your chimney" ?[/QUOTE] Because Emperor Scorpious is the one posting every article lol. Personally I still use ISIS I find the insult war a little silly.
[QUOTE=Aman;47238222]Because Emperor Scorpious is the one posting every article lol. Personally I still use ISIS I find the insult war a little silly.[/QUOTE] The whole insult thing is bullshit. Arabs have been calling them daesh pretty much since day 1. Abbreviations are not very common in Arabic but ISIS news started to become so common that an abbreviation was needed in order to make it easier for news reporters to deliver news about it. That's pretty much how it began. Its just a coincidence (and a useful one at that) that the word sounds like other words with bad connotations.
[QUOTE=damnatus;47236971]Why is it DAESH instead of ISIS in every headline now is it because of that "dont call us DAESH or we'll personally shit in your chimney" ?[/QUOTE] Because Emperor Scorpious has decided it somehow pisses them off.
[QUOTE=Virtanen;47238679]Because Emperor Scorpious has decided it somehow pisses them off.[/QUOTE] This has nothing to do with Emperor Scorpious, no idea why you guys are going at him for it. Most of us started using it after [url=[url=http://theweek.com/speedreads/446139/france-says-name-isis-offensive-call-daesh-instead]this article:[/url] [QUOTE]The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a bit of a misnomer, says France, as it lends the imprimatur of Islam to a group that the vast majority of Muslims finds despicable. "This is a terrorist group and not a state. I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims, and Islamists," France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement. "The Arabs call it 'Daesh' and I will be calling them the 'Daesh cutthroats.'"[/QUOTE]
I seriously doubt they really care what you'd call them regardless
I'll call them the "Shia-Jew idolaters" because that's things they don't like haha!
I don't like the name ISIS anyway. Considering it's a well-known name of an Egyptian god, let alone many other things, it's kinda awkward to use in any other context. I can't even use my word filter to change it because that isn't case sensitive.
[QUOTE] "This is a terrorist group and not a state. I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims, and Islamists,"[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Explosions;47238875]I'll call them the "Shia-Jew idolaters" because that's things they don't like haha![/QUOTE] Why do you feel it necessary to shitpost completely irrelevant things to the matter at hand. Not wanting to validate them as a "state" or accept their ideologies as being representative as Islam is not the same as calling them "jew idolaters", for fucks sakes
[QUOTE=Elspin;47239333]Why do you feel it necessary to shitpost completely irrelevant things to the matter at hand. Not wanting to validate them as a "state" or accept their ideologies as being representative as Islam is not the same as calling them "jew idolaters", for fucks sakes[/QUOTE] I was responding to the people who says that they don't like shoes and Daesh sounds like shoe so call them that instead.
[QUOTE=Explosions;47239417]Daesh sounds like shoe[/QUOTE] The fuck
[QUOTE=Irockz;47239429]The fuck[/QUOTE] Getting hit with the sole of a shoe is a sign of disrespect in Arabic culture.
[QUOTE=MattSif;47239481]Getting hit with the sole of a shoe is a sign of disrespect in Arabic culture.[/QUOTE] I cant imagine a culture where that means respect
[QUOTE=DJrorok;47240791]I cant imagine a culture where that means respect[/QUOTE] It's an insanely specific gesture in middle eastern culture, particularly Iraq if I recall. It's not the same as if someone just tossed something at you in anger.
The Artist Formerly Known As ISIS
[QUOTE=Explosions;47238875]I'll call them the "Shia-Jew idolaters" because that's things they don't like haha![/QUOTE] Every damn thread [editline]2nd March 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Aman;47238222]Because Emperor Scorpious is the one posting every article lol. Personally I still use ISIS I find the insult war a little silly.[/QUOTE] There's been one or two other threads that someone else posted with DAESH instead of ISIS. Plus, in the original thread about that name, I did a little poll and everyone voted for future references be DAESH instead of ISIS.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;47241107] There's been one or two other threads that someone else posted with DAESH instead of ISIS. Plus, in the original thread about that name, I did a little poll and everyone voted for future references be DAESH instead of ISIS.[/QUOTE] Technically the Arabic name for ISIS is actually 'Daesh', not out of fear or anything it's just the actual name of ISIS is Daesh.
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